This is my last post as a regular contributor to Late Last Night Books. The writing has been fun, but my favorite part of the experience has been reader feedback. Whether you left your comment on the LLNB site, one of my Facebook pages, or delivered it up close and personal, I enjoyed the conversation. This last post is a roundup of some of the thoughts you shared, along with a fervent hope that our paths will cross again soon!

What do a children’s story involving a wild rumpus, a novel about the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s, and a teenager’s sarcastic narration of a few days in his life have in common? Not much on the surface. But Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak), The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck), and The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) are members of a surprisingly large club: at one time or another, each of these literary works has been banned somewhere in the United States.

6/13/14 – THE BULWER-LYTTON FICTION CONTEST: WHEN REALLY BAD IS REALLY GOOD

Are your writing chops good enough to craft rotten prose? I mean, really rotten prose. If they are, it’s time to prove it by submitting to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, the competition that asks contestants to create a first sentence to an utter bomb of a novel. With enough skill, that sentence will equal or surpass the famous stinker produced by the contest’s namesake, Edward Bulwer-Lytton: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” (Paul Clifford, 1830)

Which comes first in a novel, the character or the plot? Sherry Audette Morrow is uniquely qualified to offer insights about how these two critical elements can make readers want to turn the page. Sherry is the founding editor of Scribble magazine (www.scribblemagazine.us) as well as a freelance writer/editor and a past president of the Maryland Writers’ Association. Her articles, poetry, and short fiction have appeared in numerous publications, including Chesapeake Life, Baltimore magazine, the anthology New Lines From the Old Line State, and Mean Girls Grown Up. I’ve benefited first-hand from her discerning literary eye, and I’m so pleased that readers of Late Last Night Books will have the opportunity to share this as well.

“She’s an old maid! She never married … She’s just about to close up the library!”

Recognize that line? It’s from the film It’s A Wonderful Life and illustrates the sad fate of Mary Hatch had her husband George Bailey never been born. That’s right; the poor thing would have lived her life repressed, bespectacled, alone. In short, she’d have been … *gasp* … a librarian!

Confession: that little thumbnail photo of me up in the left-hand corner of my posts is over ten years old. It was taken right before my first book was published, although it never ventured much farther than my publisher’s website. I am famously photo-phobic. I didn’t even want to be in my own wedding pictures. But even I know that a ten-year-old picture is pushing the boundaries of both usefulness and credibility. Do I still look like that? Sure, if you squint or stand real far away.

“If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me.” (The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger)

Last month I wrote about the daggers that rip through an author’s heart when the “wrong” actor gets cast in the movie version of his/her book. But as much as it hurts to see a beloved character misrepresented, it’s even worse when changes to carefully crafted tone and plot spawn a film that an author feels buries (or even loses) the original intent of the book. Listed below are a few authors who would rather you read their book than watch its movie adaptation.

Ouch. This isn’t what movie directors want to hear after a screening. Worse, these comments came not from random viewers, but from the authors of the books on which each film was based. (Which author said which is noted at the end of this post.)

Although authors dream of seeing their stories come alive on the big screen, it’s also a scary proposition.

I write journals. Year after year, the stacks of filled notebooks on my closet shelf grow taller, leaning into each other until I’m forced to start another pile. This stash doesn’t even include my high school journals, which I burned before leaving for college. (No regrets. A person can only stand so much embarrassment.)

My journals are a safe place to vent, float ideas, work through issues. They allow me to write honestly about my experiences. But what happens to these volumes when I’m gone? Do I really want anyone reading them when I’m not available to explain myself? At least I’m relatively anonymous; nobody outside my immediate family will care about the words I leave behind, so there’s not much worry about a public airing of my private thoughts.

With Halloween creeping upon us, this seems the perfect time to ask a personal question: how do you like your American ghosts? Do you prefer them spooky? Atmospheric? Maybe you savor a gothic entity laced with fear and darkness, or a tale where the supernatural explores the human psyche. If so, I’ll direct you to Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, or Nathaniel Hawthorne. But if (like me) you prefer the sorts of ghosts who eagerly urge you to hoist a drink or two (or twenty), then you’ll want to spend an evening with Thorne Smith.

In 1817, Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the expression “willing suspension of disbelief.” Suspension of disbelief is a wonderful thing. It allows us to enjoy and accept premises in our reading that we might never believe otherwise. As originally conceived, it was the author’s job to inject enough impression of truth into an unrealistic tale that a reader could suspend judgment of the improbability of the story. But over time the responsibility has shifted from how well an author creates a fictional world to how willing a reader is to lose herself in it. In short, the onus falls on readers to believe.

Millions of books were published last year. (Yes, really!) There’s a literary smorgasbord out there filled with more tasty stories than anyone could possibly devour in a single lifetime. Why, then, do we still make time to reread certain titles?